


sunlight through deep moss-water

by oriflamme



Series: stand still stay silent [3]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Body Horror, Eye Scream, M/M, No Hotakainen Is Neurotypical, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-01 23:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20266039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: Emil makes weird dreams.Not on purpose, probably. Still weird.





	sunlight through deep moss-water

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this fic:

Emil makes weird dreams.

Not on purpose, probably. Still weird.

-

_Remain lucid, _Ensi instructs him, from the moment she realizes that Lalli isn't daydreaming. The translucent heat-shimmer of spirits shifting in the mist over the water is more interesting than eye contact, most days.

Apparently, before Tuuri and Lalli were born, Onni started crying every night. He wound up feverish until Juha called Grandma back mid-season. Ensi knew why in a glance.

But Onni cries a lot - has for as long as Lalli's known him. Lalli stays quiet and watchful; he practices staying as still as the cats who stare at the same subtle shapes in the air. It's more interesting than half the conversations going on around him or the games Tuuri wants to play. When that gets boring, and the discordant, uneasy hum of the still forests around the island starts to seep into his sleep, an unpleasant shiver of extra sensation on his skin, Lalli scrunches up his nose, finds Ensi in the middle of a lesson with Onni, and tugs on her sleeve.

-

Outside the water gate, Grandma is sparing with her words, clipped and to the point. In the field, her word is law. Lalli follows, jumping lightly with every step so that his feet land in the exact tracks Ensi leaves in the deep mud. Sometimes he follows even when she tells him to stay behind, but it's okay - behind Ensi is the safest place to be. If he strays or gets too curious, the sharp crack of her dry voice snaps him back to her side. If they're really in trouble - if Grandma tells him to _run_ \- he obeys. Anything else would get them killed. Lack of focus is a weakness just as much as empathy, another soft spot for the voices to sink grasping, imploring hooks in.

But there are things Ensi doesn't seem to sense. Things that are new, that are strange, that are quiet in a way no one has words for yet. Sometimes they rub the wrong way, like the texture of a sweater Lalli can't stand touching or the squish of blueberries. Lalli can point them out, but he can't put a name to them so Ensi will understand.

A disciplined mind is what matters; if Lalli can't focus, he's a risk, and that is her final word. If she thinks taking him along is a mistake, she won't. People who make mistakes get others killed.

_Steel your mind with purpose. Don't be weak. Keep moving. **Focus**_.

Lalli listens. Grandma is the sharpest, strongest, cleverest person he knows, and he drinks it in with rapt, wide eyes. When he identifies all the troll sign along the edge of the creek, even the subtle ones that only make his mind twinge, she ruffles his hair with her knuckles and smiles.

-

His dream space is compact and easy to maintain, the wooden raft sun-warmed and solid over fen water both clear and murky, exactly how he wants to remember it. The water lilies drift and twine in the slow spiral of the current of open water. It doesn't have as many protective areas to hide in as Onni's space, but that's Onni. Lalli just wants to sleep with a minimum of fuss, and once he learns to tune out the voices in dreams it's simple.

Emil bypasses it completely. At first Lalli thought it was just Emil being weird (which is normal), but every night on the quarantine ship Emil ambles in, and only then does Lalli realize that Emil's nonsensical dreams of swimming birds and sugary cakes have drifted up to wrap around him. It's confusing - when Lalli tries to adapt to the logic of the dream by tossing the hook up into the air to catch a flying fish, it disappears - but Lalli's space remains solid and intact underneath the oddness.

So it's safe. Probably. Whatever it is. Onni said not to visit him a while ago and made it an order, so Lalli can't ask him. Crossing that kind of distance is too dangerous. The dream sea is more real, too close to death, the raw underbelly of the world slithering and exposed in dark water. So any questions have to wait.

Unaware of the strangeness of it all, Emil makes himself at home regardless of the scenario and starts talking. He runs out of weird things to babble about as the extended quarantine drags on, but he still shows up, flops down beside Lalli on the dock, and sighs at the liquid blue sky and its weirdly specific clouds as he broods.

The weirdest part is how Lalli doesn't mind. Emil can be clumsy and nosy and naïve, but he _fits _in a way that Lalli can't explain.

Occasionally, Lalli sighs and pats Emil on the head. A huff of sympathy. Mutual boredom. It's easier to express things with the clarity of thought. Words don't matter as much when you _understand_. Emil beams back, crooked and unrestrained, until Lalli's face burns.

Too much understanding. Lalli shoves him off the dock on reflex; the splash and splutter as Emil hits the water shatter the dream.

-

Reality oozes back in, slime-slick and cold.

The monotony of quarantine ticks toward an abrupt end, and Lalli's stomach churns as they check off the final days. He yanks the sheets and pillow all the way under the cot and covers his head, mashing his hands tighter over his ears to block them all out. The strangers milling around outside the glass walls fill the air with a barrage of muffled, incomprehensible noise. They get louder and busier with each passing day. Even the sterile white light makes his eyes ache. Nausea rolls in his guts, and the bland food they push through the slot finally tips over the line from unappealing to sickening. One of the strange voices crackles through the speaker and starts ordering Lalli to do something in Icelandic, impatient and incomprehensible and strident, adding to the overload. Emil has to communicate by increasingly silly pantomime that they want Lalli to drink water. Lalli glares, drags a glass into the pile, and spaces out sips for when he feels least like the boat is trying to kill him. Everything grates.

It's been a month. Tuuri is still dead. The quarantine period put everything on hold, but the tedious, dreamlike lull of transition is over. Whenever and _wherever _they disembark, Lalli doesn't know what will be waiting for him. If anyone will be waiting for him. How he will get home, or if he's supposed to go somewhere else instead.

He could ask, but he hasn't.

The last hours take a small eternity. Then the crew hustles them all through decontamination showers and lets them loose on the deck for the first and only time. The walkway at the cargo dock ends in a new, entirely unfamiliar city.

Land is good. The deep sea and its big, singing monsters ebb away. All the random people that Tuuri said are their new bosses are here. Taru, who is their boss but also related to them somehow, is here. It's the first real Finnish Lalli has heard since Tuuri died.

He doesn't want to hear it. Not from people who don't matter. He'd rather listen to Emil break Finnish in weird new ways than try to sort out how these people who don't matter are mixed up in how Tuuri left Keuruu in the first place. In how he feels about any of it.

He can't find Onni in the crowd. So maybe that's his answer. Onni left Keuruu for the first time in a decade for Tuuri; now he's gone back. Easy. If no one has anything for Lalli to do, he will have to figure out how to get back on his own. Tuuri was the one who knew how this job worked; Lalli doesn't know if they're supposed to leave again. He thinks she quit his job for him with paperwork, but if he shows up and starts running patrols again he doesn't think anyone will notice he was gone. Probably.

Too many unfamiliar faces, too many voices laughing and overlapping. Lalli doesn't look up as he finds a quiet, shaded spot by the side of the unloading area. The seasickness is almost gone.

He should know something is off when a heavy hand tugs him into a careful, one-armed hug. Lalli almost jolts out of his skin, too startled to yank away - except it's Onni. Onni is here, his face sharper in bad ways, too fragile for his bones. He looks faded and worn down, his bangs in shaggy, grown-out disarray, like he woke up just now and is already exhausted again.

"It will be fine," Onni says. When he tucks Lalli closer, quiet and reassuringly solid, Lalli lets it happen. He lets his gaze drop while Onni stares firmly ahead. "We will be fine."

-

_I'm going back to work at Keuruu. Don't come visit me, I'll visit you! _Onni writes, a day later, the exclamation points standing out in between the careful, round loops of his handwriting like foreign trees, indecipherable. He leaves without saying anything, the weathered, familiar weight of his presence slipping away before Lalli can notice.

-

And every part of that was a lie.

-

Onni never lies.

This is something Lalli knows. Sometimes he won't tell you things, but he won't lie.

Details sift in through the unreliable filter of Mikkel and Reynir and Emil. Onni, going back home to Saimaa. Onni, with things to take care of in Saimaa.

Not Keuruu. He only told Lalli Keuruu. Told Lalli to stay with Emil instead, deliberately, so Lalli wouldn't realize.

Reynir shows up uninvited a few times; they're in close enough proximity on the trip through the channel that he claims he can't really avoid it. He fidgets with the end of his braid and winces, and when Lalli glares in the right way Reynir lets the rest of it spill. The parts that Mikkel spoke of to Sigrun in an undertone, when they thought the younger members of the team were asleep.

_I don't want Lalli to follow me. It will be too late for him to catch up. There's nothing for him there._

_We won't meet again._

In some ways, Lalli thinks, it would have been easier to understand if Onni hadn't come to see Lalli at all. If losing Tuuri was the mistake that made Onni stop caring about him, why -

Reynir glances back worriedly as they make their way back through the reeds each night, and Lalli knows that his dreaming face is doing something again. Reynir is an open book, but Ensi taught them better. Once he's back in his space, Lalli leans over the water at the center of his space and the reflection looks stricken, confused. Vulnerable. He pushes his eyebrows down with the tips of his fingers, tries to arrange his expression into something less stupid. But it won't stick. He hisses and slaps at the water instead, then rolls over so he can stare out at the trees.

He should have known, because he knows how Onni is supposed to act when Lalli fails. Onni is the one Ensi trained the longest, the one who knows what to do. When Lalli needs help, Onni is there - a solid bulwark, a safe haven. Keuruu's military routine made him stiffer, sterner, more brittle, but even when he's frustrating he's mostly worried and sad underneath. So Lalli listens when Onni tells him to do things or to stay in his space unless his reasons are really bad, and trusts that Onni will always be there.

Lalli's not supposed to make mistakes. Mistakes are unacceptable. Anything less than their best compromises everyone's safety. Onni should have required an explanation - no excuses - if he were following the right script. He should have been wearing his disappointed face. It would have stung, but Lalli can handle it better from Onni than he can from most people.

But this time Lalli's failure was…different. Catastrophic, in a way that has sent everything inside him adrift, off-kilter. They've lost a third of their family again.

Onni didn't scold him at all. He comforted Lalli in a way he didn't deserve. It was wrong from the moment Lalli stepped off the boat, but Lalli didn't want to see it. Selfish, stupid. _What would Grandma say?_

Nothing is right, and Onni lied.

-

Beyond the sealed edges of his space, the reeds thin and the bottom of the lake drops out underneath them. The stark absence of the dead who should fill the depths leaves the water a dark, eerily clear indigo. Nothing wants to swim here. Drowned boats soundlessly drift out over the drop-off, their paddles fanned out between the deep, hollow-eyed lures.

-

Spring rests heavy on Saimaa, on the cusp of a humid and tepid summer. Daylight stretches longer, interspersed with light showers, but they can't travel over warm water like this in the restless nights. Too much activity. The mud at the edge of the water stirs on some of the smaller isles. When Reynir peers over the side of the boat, humming as his stupid braid dips closer to the water, Mikkel briskly pulls him back. When Emil tries to talk while they're out on open water, Lalli presses his fingers to Emil's mouth until he stops. Emil doesn't pull away. He watches the side of Lalli's head as they go, his expression unreadable.

Yet the air feels clear and crisp when Lalli breathes, at home in his lungs. There is danger, but he knows the rhythm of it in a way he didn't know Denmark. The sun is bright, the water is clear, and the flowers are blooming. Spring is the prettiest and most deceptive season, when everything stirs, dead and alive. For some reason, he remembers autumn and winter better - when he dredges up memories before Keuruu, summer months are a blur of deep, damp forests.

The omen follows.

Its glass-green hooves splay against the lakebed without a ripple in the water, its legs more branch than limb. Its palm-shaped antlers splinter and melt the sunlight, casting iridescent rainbows in its wake. Fresh young leaves and buds and stems sprout from the grooves around its pale, sightless eye. The higher the sun, the brighter it blooms.

Lalli stopped learning the longer runos when he was young. No point. Ensi knew them, but she rarely called on spirits - mage craft was her tool of last resort. She spent most of her life relying on her own eyes and rifle and feet, every step a prayer in motion, and that was how she trained Lalli. So most of what Lalli picked up over the years comes from Onni. Onni needs to know and sing the true essence of a spirit to call on the depth of power he does, and he's happiest when he already knows what to expect; Lalli just improvises when words are too hard.

He knows the moose one. Even if he didn't know it, the omen would still follow. It won't leave him alone.

[horns of naked willow branches/feet furnished by the rushes/and the legs by water reeds/veins of withered grasses/eyes of daisies of the meadow/ears of water-flowers/and skin of fir bark/out of sap-wood, muscles -]

Reynir stares at it. So of course it keeps trying to speak. But omens can't do that. Its soundless speech reverberates once before the omen dissipates; Lalli's eardrums pop.

"Stop looking, stupid," Lalli mutters at Reynir, as the omen begins to reform.

Of all the things he could choose to understand, Reynir makes a face at 'stupid.' Maybe because Lalli has to use it so much with these people.

Good.

-

Onni doesn't stop at Toivosaari. He leaves the marker for Tuuri beside their parents', the grass crumpled under the stone - but keeps going east. Like a big long metal train thing, determined to charge along a path Lalli can't see. The skald has no reason to lie about that.

There are no bodies buried here; only ash. Except for Tuuri. But Onni came to place the marker anyway. Lalli tries to picture the trip here - the two of them alone, wordless, paddling in unspoken sync under the sun and shade to springtime Saimaa, watching the grassy fields rustle in the breeze so Onni had space to pretend he wasn't crying - and doesn't understand. Lalli would have come. Lalli would have come alone if Onni told him to, so Onni wouldn't have to leave Keuruu's safe zone again.

Onni wanted to come here. Onni didn't want Lalli to follow him. Onni hates being alone, hates leaving Keuruu, but now Onni keeps walking away, deeper and deeper into the lost reaches of Saimaa.

Lalli frowns at the fire and tries to think Onni thoughts. Other people can be perplexing, preoccupied with weird and arbitrary things, but Onni usually makes sense. It doesn't take much effort to understand him: Onni wants to be safe, and to keep others safe. Tuuri was harder.

But Lalli keeps losing the trail in muddy water and looping back to the start. This shouldn't be hard, but it contradicts too much of what Lalli has taken as fact. Onni lied so Lalli wouldn't know where he was going. Onni said they would be fine, but Onni didn't actually want them to stay together.

And Lalli doesn't know what happens if Onni continues to walk and…doesn't stop. If Onni goes away and doesn't come home again. If he finds something in dead, silent Saimaa, and is alone when it happens.

Did he think Lalli wouldn't come to find him?

Something tightens high in Lalli's chest, like a needle pulling a stitch tight through his throat. It makes it hard to breathe.

If the wrong person came home, why did Onni come to see Lalli at all?

-

In an ideal world, Lalli works alone. If Reynir really wanted to help, he would chop off his braid, mind his own business, and stop bringing his dog along when he does weird dream stuff. It wouldn't make him any less rude, but it might make him tolerable to deal with.

Instead, after they dream of Toivosaari, and Hilja, and - everything - he starts scribbling his staves everywhere. "Lukkustafir," he babbles at Lalli as he carves up the boat with sigils. They have power, but who knows what they do. Maybe other Icelandic mages do but Reynir certainly doesn't. He tries one that makes both himself and Lalli throw up in unison, and Emil has to stab a knife through the carving before it stops. As though Lalli needs the distraction.

But Reynir also starts cutting up sections of fabric from any extra cloth unlucky enough to wind up unguarded - Emil loses a cloak to Reynir's grabby hands - and scribbles a bunch of crossed-out attempts on paper. He holds the paper copies up to the light, scratches the back of his neck, and shrugs, setting them aside to stitch into the fabric later. One of Sigrun's shirts meets the same fate before Mikkel takes Reynir aside and tries to confiscate his sewing kit and red thread.

"I figure blindfolds might help?" Reynir explains, slogging through Lalli's space with enthusiasm. He still goes out wandering the reeds with floating steps to track Onni's vague, unfindable presence every night. Lalli doesn't bother leaving his space. It's useless, anyway. "Y'know, to counteract the evil eye? I mean, if even looking someone else in the eye can pass this kade's influence on, it can't hurt, right?"

The problem with that is too obvious. Lalli can't. "Mmf," he says, and lays back on the raft to stare blankly up. After waving his hand in front of Lalli's eyes a few times, Reynir takes the hint and leaves him alone.

(Reynir figures it out the next day, anyway, when he ties a blindfold over his face and rams straight into a tree. He unpicks the stitches with a sigh, and goes back to the drawing board.)

-

It's not that he forgot any of it. Hilja, and the flurry of bubbling flesh and prehensile ribs that bounded out of the cottage where she and Ensi would drink nettle tea and laugh while Lalli crawled under benches to hide behind the heart-patterned tablecloth. She brought clippings back from silent gardens through quarantine, and her garden was full of flowers that didn't bloom anywhere else. Her daughter Kerttu was the school teacher.

Not even Lalli sensed it. He caught the infected beast in her package, even swathed in masking spells, but not _her_. It was just Hilja, crankier.

She killed everyone on a clear fall day, just by breathing.

Lalli hadn't thought about it all the way through in…a while. Life moved on. After the first few years, Saimaa grew distant. Security protocols were updated; night scouting took on a regular cadence as Lalli learned the lonely ways around Keuruu. Onni stopped finding inventive new places to cry. Tuuri scolded him for staring at people too much, and scolded him for not making eye contact enough, depending on the day. The deep, sucking sinkhole in the center of Lalli's dreams filled in with water and lilies, until it was level with the rest of his space. He still closes his eyes and covers his ears when they mention Grandma to this day, but that was the last thing she ordered him to do. They had a good life again.

-

He can't sense it in her, either. It is just Ensi, crankier.

**_Look at me _**_when I talk to you, child! _it snaps after Ensi gradually turns to face him, her slack hands falling away from her eyes like an afterthought. The abrupt, loud burst of anger makes Lalli startle, almost look up instinctively in the face of an angry, yelling adult - and he shivers.

-

He blames Reynir for the dream - foreign mages are the ones who have visions like that. Lalli didn't ask him and Emil to plunk themselves down in his memories and start rooting around. But it laid out everything so neatly that even Reynir and Emil could line the pieces up. Let them experience a taste of what it felt like, when it was supposed to be private.

But now -

It makes sense. A piece of the puzzle Lalli hadn't considered in ages. Reynir's magic wants them to remember the kade.

The omen maybe should have been a clue. But Lalli learned to ignore that one a long time ago. It's always hanging around, so it kind of defeats the purpose of an omen.

Reynir takes the warning to heart, irritatingly earnest. Emil broods, distracted enough that he only makes token complaints when they have to set up camp in weird old places, like the grassy, hollow belly of a fallen metal tree. He pouts as he fetches water for Mikkel's stew, but at night Emil falls quiet as he fretfully cards his fingers through Lalli's hair. Lalli rests his head in Emil's lap while it happens, for convenience, and lets Emil's worried, stuttering attempts to ask about the kade in Finnish roll over him. Even if Lalli explained, he probably wouldn't understand. Not really.

_It's looking for us again_, Onni said.

The thing that came stalking under the surface of the water never ventured out of Saimaa. It hunted Lalli and Onni for a while: sometimes a willowy, baleful figure in the distant mists, sometimes a leviathan, crawling thing under deceptively tranquil water. Always with a red, bloodshot eye, glinting with an eerie slant of light. Onni's space was only ever a step away when he insisted a young Tuuri and Lalli stay in the same assigned barracks as him; if Lalli felt he was being watched, or if Onni called sternly, Lalli would dart across the gap and spend the rest of the night safe in Onni's area. Onni never turned him away. If Lalli wasn't in the mood to learn Onni's newest lesson or talk about his day Onni would sigh, pat the rock beside him, and tell Lalli to go back to sleep.

But after a while, it slunk away. The dream sea is never safe to swim in, but that persistent, creeping sensation of being _followed_ faded into the subconscious over time. Before the trip through the Silent World - before circumstances knocked Lalli out of his space and into Emil's, before the ghosts and all their efforts to defend against them stirred up the roiling sea with the most activity in years - Lalli can't remember the last time Onni felt worried enough to call him over.

It found Lalli, out in open water.

His heart cut out with a cold drop as it answered a thought he never spoke aloud, the answer slipped right in his mind. He screamed, but even as he did he knew his voice was too thin, too strangled compared to the rising crash of water to carry far enough. It pulled him down and held him under the water with cool, caustic amusement, tightening colossal limbs around him as the weight crushed all the air out of him, until he was too woozy to fight it.

It did that on purpose. It wanted him to _drown _for a reason. The irony made it savor.

[Let yourself drown. It will be faster.]

-

"Miksi…outo, ruma hevonen?" Emil asks, pointing.

The fact that the omen walks alongside the boat now, trailing streams of glass water-weed from its fetlocks, is probably a bad sign.

The fact that Emil can see it is probably worse.

Emil's Finnish is the worst of all.

"Not an ugly horse. Moose," Lalli corrects, shutting Emil's mouth for him, and pointedly doesn't look at the omen until Emil mirrors him, frowning over the prow of the boat at the deep forest. Emil's head tips over as he dozes off, his face smushed against Lalli's shoulder.

He needs to find a way to leave them behind. Where they're going isn't safe. Lalli can feel it, a slow pulse of terrible certainty thudding in his chest like a second heartbeat. Lalli can infer from context that Reynir has told Sigrun about the vision of the kade's influence over Hilja - she keeps jabbing her finger into Reynir's latest stitched stave and chattering and arguing animatedly with him about his technique via Mikkel. But for the most part, they don't get it. It's been a mild trip, deceptively easy despite the warm weather, and most of the time Sigrun lounges in the back while Mikkel keeps them on track, her smile relaxed as they take in the sun. Like it's a vacation for them.

He doesn't understand why they came to find him in the first place. There's no reason for any of them to be here. Except maybe Emil, who would absolutely do something this dumb. Lalli got the vague impression in one of Emil's rambling dream sessions that Mikkel ordered them to go together to Sweden and set things on fire for their new job, so Emil is probably following through on that.

But he doesn't see how. If he slips away in the night, they'll be stranded in the middle of uncleansed lands in high summer without a scout - only Reynir and the useless cat. They might choose to keep following him and run right into danger anyway.

Lalli grumbles, and closes his eyes, and lets his head drift to the side as the mists of Emil's dream flow in over the side of the boat.

-

They don't know how to fight something as sinister as a kade. Or if Onni knew, he never told Lalli. Confronting something this dangerous alone is stupid - but Onni isn't stupid. Lalli failed, and Tuuri died, and yet still that doesn't explain _why_ Onni would do this.

If he's walking out here to die, Lalli doesn't know what to do.

"Don't worry. We'll save him," Reynir says, earnestly. "We're closer, I can tell. Maybe I can reach him now -"

When he tries to make a beeline out of Lalli's space, Lalli has to yank him back onto the wooden path. The rushes cluster all around the perimeter of their spaces, so thick and dense with fog that they can't see the night sky. The water is opaque, a pale, hazy green that reveals nothing below the surface.

-

Reynir stitches the final product onto everyone's jackets through the night: wide bands of cloth that hang over the eyes with the hood pulled all the way forward, covered in rust-red threadwork. The main staves are blunt snowflakes, the bottom leaf empty, with sharper, more elaborate arrows and half-circles that run all the way around to the temples. Reynir has deep shadows under his eyes, an even more twitchy smile than normal, and bandages wound all over his fingers that Mikkel shakes his head over and rewraps even worse. He babbles an explanation in Icelandic while Sigrun and Emil nod at Mikkel's translation. Emil bites his lower lip with concentration.

Lalli just flips the hood up and blinks. He waves his hand in front of his covered eyes, and can see it almost perfectly through the thin, prickly veil of foreign magic.

The faint traces of Reynir's blood make his nose itch. Lalli sneezes, skeptical.

Better than nothing. He tugs Emil's down for him, and lets Reynir handle arguing with Mikkel.

-

Everything for a kilometer around the isle is dead. The trees have been stripped from every surface, leaving only bald rock and stumps on every island they pass. Only the reeds remain; the clear paths through them to the center form a deliberate spiral. The mist won't fade, no matter how high the pale disc of the sun sits in the sky.

The cat huddles under the seats, bristling, and swipes at anyone who tries to touch it. Lalli wants to do the same, but he needs to not be useless. Not be weak.

Onni can't have beat them here by much. He had a month's head start from Iceland, but he had to search for this place the hard way.

So he's still standing when Lalli hops over the side of the boat into waist-deep water, and makes a break for the rocky shore. Someone falls out with a splash in his wake, but he can't look back. If there's anything left in the water, it's overshadowed by the way Onni lists to one side and chokes up a dark trickle of blood with a horrible, wet sound. The ground all around the creek that runs through the isle was scorched by fire, but it flakes, cold and faded under Lalli's feet. Other than that and Onni's splintered kantele, shattered at the base of a tree stump, there's no sign of any physical struggle.

The pale, willow-thin figure beneath the last, thorny tree stares down at the top of Onni's bowed head. Her ash-white hair hangs on either side of her face in long tatters. Her one remaining eye is a dull, bloodshot red. She doesn't carry a rifle or a knife; she doesn't need them.

-

_Don't stop for **anyone**, _Ensi tells him, and Lalli darts away between the trees, the rifle catching on the grass tufts. It will be too big for him for a few years yet, but Onni won't want it after they reach Keuruu. Holding a gun can't make Onni feel safe again. He immerses himself in magecraft instead, codifying it in a way Ensi learned on the fly.

Ensi raises her knife, and lines it up with her left eye.

She only manages one before the knife falls from her slack hand, forgotten, her expression distant and unfocused as she stares up at the sky. Blood traces a line down her far cheek.

Then she walks away. Away from Lalli, from Hilja, from the village.

Toward the east.

-

This is probably only one of the kade's bodies. The nature of the thing is too big for just one person - it holds enough souls in thrall that it fills the entire abyssal basin of the dream sea. It preys on mages for a reason. Ensi was immune to the rash, and so her body is intact. The sight of her punches the air out of Lalli's lungs.

But a kade is more than a contagion, more than the mesmeric, intrusive thoughts of a troll.

It can still be the latter, though. Even if it doesn't yet have a nest in one's subconscious. It plays the long game. Onni has been fighting it for almost a week without rest, and on too many levels, it is just Grandma talking.

[You can't save him,] the kade hums, almost absentminded, as Lalli races up and throws up a shield between them and Ensi. He keeps his eyes down and his head ducked, because he's not stupid. When Ensi's gaze rakes across his face, he feels Reynir's stave burn like it's about to catch fire_. Again. _[Do you think that will save _you_, little swimmer?]

Ensi snaps her fingers.

The dry wood of the tree cracks like a shell, and a troll spills out, all distended organs and grasping mouths. Yells erupt behind Lalli.

[There is another one beside you, child,] she tells Onni, lightly. [You might want to deal with that, so we can finish our little talk.]

Onni lurches with a hoarse gurgle of panic. He punches without raising his head to look, shoving away; it's all instinct. His fist catches the edge of Lalli's jaw when he can't dodge in time. The flimsy shield snaps in two as Lalli hits the creek.

It's shallow. It tastes like the rotten roots of the tree. He's already scrabbling to push himself back up when the kade steps on the back of his head, and shoves his face back under.

[A full set would be nice,] it muses, with Grandma's dry voice, as he struggles to find air. Half his face is dry still, but his nose and mouth keep inhaling more water than air. Drowning in the _stupidest_ way. [But I would almost prefer to have you. The immune ones don't _rot._]

Then a pause. The foot shoves down one last time and Lalli writhes.

It lifts away. He pushes up, gasping. Ensi grabs a handful of hood and hair at the same time as she yanks his head back. "Didn't I tell you to _look at me_ when I talk to you?" she snarls, with her own voice, and Lalli freezes up.

Which is when Emil punches her.

Lalli scrambles back from the water. There's a troll to deal with and Emil should be over there. Instead, when Lalli rolls to his feet, Ensi is staring Emil in the eye while he gags, his hood sagging down his back.

[Die,] the kade orders, carelessly.

Stupid, stupid Emil slaps his hands over his ears. "Just - do nothing!" he says, with a hysterical grin frozen on his face.

Lalli seizes Emil's hood for him and rips the blindfold back down over his eyes. But Emil is already crumpling, too heavy for Lalli to prop upright as he drops.

-

Lalli can't breathe.

But if you call to Onni for help, he will absolutely answer.

This is truth.

"Onni! Help!" he yells.

-

The dive to Emil's mind is more of a fall. Lalli's weirdly familiar with it. The link between them never went away.

He's not sure the presence diving frantically after him is really Onni, though. It could be anything - they're in the middle of the kade's abyss, and all it will take is for one tendril to brush against him.

But when Lalli drops into the still water outside Emil's door, it's a singed, disheveled owl that crashes after him and starts to sink. Lalli tows it to the edge of the hallway. Onni is too stunned and exhausted to fight him, his luonto skin drifting away. Lalli drags him down the hall. "Onni," he says, feeling his grip on his emotions fray as he glances over his shoulder. "Onni, wake up."

Emil stumbles out of the door of the room with all the food. His ribbon is askew, but he isn't dead. "What - now there are two of you?!" Emil says, staring down at Onni instead of _helping_ Lalli haul him over to the fireplace. "Why is _he_ here now? Weren't we in danger?"

That's too obvious to be a real question, so Lalli doesn't waste time answering. Emil feels asleep, not dead, but Lalli's not sure that Onni is breathing.

Reynir stumbles out of thin air and hits the far wall. Braid flying around, he punches the air when he see them. "Yes! Made it!"

Emil gestures at Reynir's…everything, distraught. Emil exaggerates a lot, but in this instance Lalli agrees implicitly. "You too?!"

"Yeah! I got Sigrun to punch me." Reynir trots over and peers down at Onni.

Emil clutches his head. "This is my nightmare."

Lalli is surrounded by stupid people.

Onni coughs. He spits up blood and water, here - but he still opens his eyes. For a second Onni squints around the room, confused.

Then his eyes focus on Lalli, and he pulls away. He stares at Lalli like Lalli is the last person on earth he wanted to see. "Lalli. Lalli, what are you _doing _here?!" Onni demands, sharply.

Lalli was so busy struggling to understand why Onni left the way he did that he forgot to think about how Onni would feel when Lalli showed up anyway. Lalli goes perfectly still, mute. When he scrapes together a response, his voice sounds so far away. "Finding you. You left." Usually it's simpler in dreams, but Lalli stumbles on the words. He's not explaining right because he still doesn't understand. He needs to make it a question, but it's not working. "You didn't go to Keuruu," he tries.

Onni staggers to his feet. One of his shoulders is dislocated. "You can't be here. It isn't safe. I_ told_ you to stay away."

Lalli unfolds from his crouch slowly, gingerly. He knows his eyes are too wide again as he stares at the back of Onni's head - too vulnerable - and he forces his gaze down. "I…didn't know where you went," he says. "You weren't anywhere anymore."

"I don't understand what's happening! But I understand that _we do not have enough cake in the house for all of you!_" Emil insists to Reynir.

Onni shakes his head curtly, teeth gritted in an unreadable grimace. The stitch in Lalli's throat draws tighter still. "I can't hold it off much longer. You need to leave," Onni orders, flatly. He strides back toward the end of the hallway, but what he's saying doesn't make _sense_. His arm is still dislocated and there's blood all down his chin and Onni needs to leave with them.

Lalli reaches out - he can't tell if his reactions are slow, or if his hand flinches a little as he succeeds in grabbing the back of Onni's cloak. "No," he says, uselessly, before his throat closes up and his words shut down.

Onni whips around and grabs him by the arms, and Lalli can only stare blankly. "It already almost killed you once! I can't keep you safe anymore. This has to end, now. I've already lost her, and I can't lose you, too." Onni's expression looks - shattered. Then he shuts down; he closes his eyes, and he looks too much like he did in Iceland - strained to the breaking point. Or maybe already broken. "I don't have anything else to give."

"And why is the weird moose outside my window now?!" Emil screeches, throwing up his hands, before Lalli has time to process any of that.

"Hi, ominous moose?" Reynir adds, waving a hand.

Onni freezes exactly like Lalli. Then they both flinch and look out the window at the same time.

The omen peers inside with its hollow eye socket, the grooves where the knife cut full of bone-pale flowers. With all of them staring at it, the translucent moose opens its mouth.

It pops before it can speak.

-

They enter the building to silently circumvent a beast that blocks the path. Ensi pushes Lalli behind her and creeps forward, but Lalli can already hear the telltale wet drip echoing from somewhere deep in the complex. It is a nest, and they cannot get around it. Any of the sacs around them could be viable.

Ensi touches the ground, and raises her hand. "My guardian. My self. My unwavering nature," she murmurs.

Her luonto answers. It surges out from her, striding through the halls while Ensi concentrates, and clears the way through. Then it strides back on a second, careful sweep, and comes to a stop beside her.

When Ensi rises, it's with a thin trickle of blood running down her nose and a small, satisfied smile. She thumbs the blood away. "Come, Lalli," she says, holding out a hand.

Lalli commits it to memory, and ducks under the moose's fading afterimage to grasp her fingers.

-

"Cover your eyes!" Onni barks, his command voice cracking as he hauls his ragged hood down.

They do, just in time for the nightmare moose to crane its head in through the door they came through, its slithering neck smashing the furniture of Emil's dream hallway with its bulk as it peers down at them.

[Ah. There you all are,] the kade says, pleasantly.

Then Ensi's form flows smoothly out of its gap-mouthed grin, crosses the room in a stride, and slaps Emil flat across the face. Emil staggers back against the fireplace, one hand too close to the fire, the other touching the side of his face. He stares down as his shoes almost desperately, but the kade still has its intrusive voice. [The fire is here. You're going to sit and watch it happen again, like the useless lump you will always be,] Ensi informs Emil.

"I - what? Yes?" Emil says, dazed.

The whole dream judders. The fire that Emil said never reaches here streaks across the dark fields outside the window, shattering the glass as heat roars through.

"Uh, no?!" Reynir yells, as the flames consume the curtains and lick along the ceiling. He clasps his hands together and drops to his knees beside Emil, and a stave lights up the floor around them. The fire curves around the round edge of his magic. Reynir slaps the ground proudly. "Protection against fire! Good for farmhouses _and_ barns!"

In all the time Lalli spent stuck here, he's never seen what happens when the fire hits. They have to _go, _and get this thing away from Emil's mind, before it does damage a non-mage can't heal from.

Ensi steps up to the edge of Reynir's circle, and raises her hand again. Reynir and Emil grab each other and duck.

Lalli draws his knife and slashes at it.

He only intends to tag the kade and dart away, lead it back out the hall and into the water. Not good, but they need to not be in _here_. If a direct command to die with eye contact wasn't enough to kill Emil, the problem is having mages in his head.

Ensi catches his wrist and shoves Lalli up against the far wall in one seamless motion. Fire sweeps through the room, bringing down a section of the flimsy ceiling between them and Onni.

[Onni is lying, you know. He only lies to you, useless thing,] the kade says, holding him up with a hand on his neck. Lalli kicks and scratches at Ensi's arm, but none of that can stop a kade from talking. It's all the thoughts Lalli couldn't quite finish on the way here. The terrible logic that has the sickening ring of truth when Ensi explains it to Lalli with disdain dripping from her voice. [If only you had been better. If only you had been faster. She's dead because of you, and he will never really forgive that. It will always be there - _festering_. He didn't bring you along because he couldn't stand the sight of you. The odd little cousin taken under his wing, out of pity. He'd rather die.]

Lalli kicks. He can't breathe. His eyes are scrunched shut, but it doesn't matter. There's a cold, empty sinkhole in the pit of his stomach and Ensi's other hand rests against his face, ready to push his eyelids up, but his face is hot with mortifying tears. [You shouldn't have come home at all. You killed her,] the kade informs him, conversationally. [Did you really expect anyone to save you? Did you think he would forgive you? Did you think**_ I _**would forgive you?! Just give up. It will be easier.]

Lalli forces himself to glance to the side as the kade peels his eyelid open.

He blinks. The room is no longer on fire.

Onni's hand is wreathed in flame as he punches Ensi across the jaw. "Not." And punches again. "Him." And once more. "You won't have him."

Then Onni collapses midstep, his sleeve charred all the way up his shoulder, as he vomits blood. Lalli dives over Onni from where Ensi dropped him against the wall, covering Onni's head.

The kade shrugs off Ensi's burning form, and the moose leans in further with its wide, baleful red eye. [You've reached your limit, child. You reached it days ago. But now you are_ all _here_._]

It opens its jaws with a bone-splitting wrench, wide enough to swallow the whole room. Water begins to gush in around the sides of its neck, soaking the floor. [Come. Join me.]

Lalli can't speak. He lost the words a small eternity ago. Onni's hand spasms on the floor, but he can't lift himself. Reynir and Emil are stuck in Reynir's bubble - maybe they'd survive, but maybe the kade will flood Emil's mind with dead water. They're probably just going to die.

Lalli reaches out, both palms wide as the kade's eye bears down, and thinks that in this, at least, he and Onni are the same. Lalli can't lose them, either.

The small shield spell Onni taught him so long ago catches the light, and erupts as Lalli calls the sun.

-

The light burns deep into the bloodshot eye, and something deep in the sea screams in silent, reverberating rage.

-

Lalli wakes up to a firm, gnarled hand gripping his shoulder, holding him upright. Long, ashen hair hangs over his face as Ensi raises her head.

There is a terrible sound as she finishes driving Lalli's knife through her remaining eye. She hangs there for a moment, sightless, her grip on Lalli's shoulder slowly loosening. Her other hand falls from the knife and blindly feels for Lalli's face - smooths his bangs back out of his face.

A decade of haunting Saimaa. Ensi is very light as Lalli lowers her to the ground.

It seems like a good idea to lie down, too. Before he throws up. The bile in his mouth tastes like saltwater. Lalli squints around.

There are…a lot more trolls than he remembers there being when they all passed out. Enough trolls that he _really _should have detected them, even with the kade overshadowing their presence.

Thankfully, they all appear to be dead.

"**_JEG ELSKER DEG, FINLAND!_**" Sigrun shrieks from on top of the pile. She has a rifle in one hand and her knife in the other and is breathing like she ran a marathon. Her victory scream echoes over the lake.

In the distance, something emits a reedy, curious cry in reply.

Mikkel finishes turning Onni onto his side and raises his eyebrows at Sigrun.

She skids down the side of the pile, unconcerned. "All good?" she calls, close enough to the Swedish Lalli has that he understands.

Without lifting his head, Emil raises his hand and gives a shaky thumbs up.

-

Onni cries in his sleep.

That's normal, though.

-

For a while it was baseline, every night. It got rarer over time. It upset Tuuri, though; she would cover her ears and hum to herself and curl up harder until Onni stopped. Lalli recognized it, because it was the same way he wanted to curl up and meltdown after a mistake.

So Onni would find private corners to cry in, and Lalli would follow. He didn't know what to do to make it stop, really; it wasn't the kind of sadness that went away.

Lalli tried to be careful. But sometimes Onni would go quiet, and call Lalli out from wherever he hid that time. His eyes were always dry by then, and he would send Lalli firmly back to bed.

"Is Onni alright?" Tuuri asked in a whisper, when Lalli crept back into the room. Her eyes were bright with worry as she fidgeted with her braid.

"Ynh," Lalli reported back, depending on the night.

It didn't really matter what he said: Tuuri always brightened, her smile tight at the corners. "Great! Good night, Lalli!" she sang, and burrowed back under her covers.

-

Onni sleeps through the entire trip back. The useless cat who did absolutely nothing worth mentioning in the fight naps on Onni's chest while he lays unconscious under the seats. Mikkel swaddled him in a cocoon of blankets and tucked him down there so Mikkel could check Onni's vitals and row at the same time.

The side of Reynir's face bruises in the shape of Sigrun's fist. After the first time he tries to jubilantly bug Onni in his space and Lalli swats him away, he takes the hint and starts chattering to Sigrun through Mikkel and increasingly made-up hand signals. After they start mentioning the name 'Norway' a lot, Lalli tunes them out as background noise and goes back to scanning the lake for threats. Someone has to.

But Emil makes dreams weird. Onni stumbles in blearily on the third night, which happens to be the night that Emil insists on filling the fishing dock with weird, ugly cats and a full picnic spread. Pelle Svanslös is some kind of Swedish thing that makes Emil's face light up as he explains, but now he's worked himself up over the non-existent language barrier. Only Emil could complain about the fact that in dreams they understand each other just fine.

"I'm just saying, what's the _point _if we can't practice languages in here?" Emil grumbles, tossing his hair. Even in here, where appearance depends mostly on the true self, his hair is starting to get long. "I should be a _master_ of Finnish by now. We're being _thwarted._"

Lalli pats the top of Emil's head, but doesn't adjust his flat, unsympathetic stare. Emil likes to complain just to complain. When Onni's presence registers, Lalli peeks back over his shoulder to see him standing at the end of the dock, looking sleepily baffled by the sight of them.

It's probably the cats, or the tiny tea set with purple horse-moose running around the saucer rims, or the fact that the water is full of glass fish today. Onni blinks, finally. Lalli hunches his shoulders and averts his gaze when Onni focuses on him, but he can still feel eyes on his back. He steals another bite off Emil's plate of cinnamon buns - they're filled with sweet almond paste, which ranks Sweden marginally higher on Lalli's internal list - and scrunches his eyes shut as the scuff of Onni's boots comes closer.

"…In dreams, language is irrelevant," Onni says, slowly. Lalli chances another peek, and sees Onni squinting down at them with an expression that says he's still processing.

"And I'm telling you, it's _sabotage_," Emil says, folding his arms with an air of finality. He casts a cool, considering look back at Onni, then huffs. "I suppose you can be here, too. Lalli has been worried sick about you, you know. This whole little side trip has been on your account."

Onni glances around one last time, and gives up. He sits right between them, his legs shaky as he drops to the ground. "This is…not normal," he says. But he still takes a plate with a tiny cardamom cake and eyes it speculatively.

Then he says, "Lalli."

Lalli lets his chin thunk against the dock and glares down at the glittering fish centimeters from his nose. Their bellies are full of bright red glass shards, and they don't swim like normal fish would. They follow the spiral of the water all the way down and back up, darting just out of reach whenever one of the dream cats tries to catch them.

"Thank you. For coming to find me," Onni says, very quietly.

Lalli doesn't know what to say. As Lalli's silence stretches out, Onni lets his gaze fall to his lap. He doesn't touch the cake.

It's an unfamiliar want. It takes Lalli too long to place it, long enough that Onni's dream self starts to visibly fade a little at the edges, and then a little longer to commit to it. Lalli shoves himself up and leans against Onni's side, but after that he draws a blank. They spent most of their childhood figuring out that Lalli liked pats on the head or shoulder better, that he shied away from anything more overbearing like a skittish cat, except on such rare occasions that they might as well be nonexistent. Onni adapted, rather than the other way around.

Onni crushes him in a hug. It's a little too tight, but for once that's exactly what's called for.

Onni's still faded and tired at the edges though, when the knot in Lalli's chest finally unwinds enough for him to breathe again. "Stupid Onni. Go to sleep," Lalli says, jabbing the dock between them.

He's too exhausted to even argue. Onni's eyes are half-closed already before he finishes lying down. "Mnh."

His furs got all burnt up. Lalli dumps his on top of Onni and swings his legs over the edge of the dock. Emil's hair is bright under the dream of the summer sun, there are pale white flowers dotting the shady tree branches, and the water is clear and cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Me, watching Minna update every day so that my Hotakainen backstory designed to maximize angst has 2 remain in constant flux as she burns the bridge behind me and ahead of me at the same time:
> 
> Note: In the comic the Icelandic newspaper prints the crew’s stories sometime in June. Time is fake anyway, so I moved Finland adventure up a bit to late spring/earl(ier) summer.


End file.
